Alex’s life is falling apart. Her husband, George (Chris Messina: Palo Alto), has had it with being a stay-at-home father and househusband and has hit the road. Her son, Dakota (Skylar Gaertner: They Came Together), is lonely and needs to make more friends, or so his teachers say. Her Dad (Don Johnson: The Other Woman), who lives with them, is having worrisome trouble with his memory. Her sister, Lily (Katie Nehra), has moved back into help out in George’s absence but could be doing more harm than good. And her work as an environmental lawyer for a tiny storefront activist group is heating up with a big case against a wealthy Los Angeles developer (Derek Luke: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) that has a rapidly approaching trial date. How can she possibly manage all this stress? Alex of Venice, Messina’s directorial debut, is an agreeably satisfying story about the myriad pressures of ordinary 21st-century life and taking the bumps with as much grace as possible, and by accepting that sometimes ya just gotta let off some steam. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Kill the Messenger), as Alex, is eminently relatable as a woman whose problems look a lot like those you and I would recognize, or maybe actually see ourselves in: hers is one of the more realistic modern families I’ve seen onscreen recently, their sort of nontraditional very much the new normal for lots of people. Even better: Alex of Venice is the kind of human-scaled movie that movies have almost forgotten of late, a very compassionate story about everyday change that that doesn’t pretend change is easy, but which does remind us that it’s often necessary and that we can find ways to cope with it. Which makes this an almost therapeutic cinematic experience.

If you’re tempted to post a comment that resembles anything on the film review comment bingo card (now updated for 2017’s trolls!) you might want to reconsider.

RogerBW

One refreshing point already: this isn’t Sex and the City 2 or… I can’t even remember now, a year or two ago, one of those “how can a woman juggle job and husband and child” post-romantic comedies. The answer isn’t going to drop out of the sky at the scriptwriter’s whim; it’s going to be earned.